I grew up a Yankee fan, I favor Pitchers whenever possible, I am a stathead, and my dream job is to be a GM for an MLB franchise. In the summer, I go to MLB games and catch baseballs. In the winter, I write about what teams are doing to get better or worse. I try to be positive and unbiased in my writing, but that isn't always possible when evaluating teams truthfully.

Results tagged ‘ Sean Bigness ’

First of all, before I get started, I forgot to tell all of you that the BallhawkFest video I did a while ago came with it’s fair share of bloopers, so here’s that video:

It’s unlisted, so you can see it here, but the only other place to see it is I’ll have an annotation for it in the main BallhawkFest video.

Now that we have that out of the way, here’s your semi-regularly-scheduled entry. Well actually, while we’re posting videos up here, I made a Before The Gates Open video for here. Yes, I coming back with this video series in 2013, re-doing all the stadiums I did last year and any new ones I visit this year. (Except for the Cell because those two games I went to the weekend prior to this game were probably the last I’ll be there this season.) But anyway, without further ado, here is the 2013 version of Before The Gates Open- Target Field:Click here to go to that video, since it’s being stupid and doesn’t want to embed on this page.
After that, Sean and I stood in line and waited for the gates to finally open:

Once we got in the gates, it was Sean and not I who snagged the first baseball. See Sean had been in contact with either Hector Santiago or Brian Omogrosso—I can’t remember which— on Twitter and had gotten whoever it was to follow him. He had also asked the player if the player could toss Sean a ball at the game later on. When Sean asked him for a ball, the player recognized him and obliged his request:

He then rubbed the fact that he had snagged infinitely more baseballs at this game than I had for the next five to ten minutes. But, being Sean, that was his day of ballhawking as he went and got food soon after that.
While he was gone eating, I was snagging. The first ball I got was in right-center field. When a ball rolled to the wall, I got Matt Thorton to toss me my first ball of the game:

After I got this ball, I headed to the back of the section I was in and gave the ball to the usher instructing him to give the ball away to the next kid with a glove he saw.

I then headed out to the standing room for one reason: Adam Dunn was hitting. Just as I got there Dunn put a ball right in the middle of the triangle created by Gate 34, the program vendor, and the beer stand in the following picture:

(Normally I would draw an arrow for you, but I’m writing this entry on my phone.) I chased after this ball, but it bounced outside of the gate, so I couldn’t pursue it any further. After I gave up on the chase, I went back to the flag pole of the American flag. A few pitches later, Dunn launched a ball almost directly at me. I took a couple steps forward before I saw a man in front of me in the wheelchair section reaching up for the ball with his hand. Since I’ve narrowly missed getting clocked by a couple deflections, so I simply put my glove where the ball would go with no deflection and turned my face away from the ball. Thankfully the guy completely whiffed and the ball landed in my glove:

Given that I’m one of—if not THE worst ballhawks I’ve seen in the outfield at judging fly balls, this was a nice proud moment for me. Unfortunately it would be my last ball of batting practice. I would head off to left field after that, and had an open row to run:

But everything that cleared the wall was going in the first two rows. There was also room deeper in the section:

But of course it pretty much takes a line drive to reach back there, so it’s not a great place in general. Fast-forward to after batting practice, Sean and I met up with one of his dorm room floor friends, Mikey in left field. Mikey—like most sane people—got to the game after batting practice given the fact that it was 99 degrees. We then decided that all three of us needed to document our group with each of us taking a different form of social media. Sean took Vine, Mikey took Snapchat, and I picked putting the picture of this blog:

When the White Sox coaches came to the bullpen, I headed over there to try to get a ball from them as they cleared the balls that had gone in there during batting practice. Then, I got a ball from the back-up bullpen catcher, whose name I don’t know, tossed me one of the the baseballs in the bullpen:

We then stayed in left field for a couple innings until the seats got crowded. Sean and Mikey then went to seats in third base foul ground, and I headed out to the standing room in right field:

I don’t need to sit when I have a view like that. Of course no one hit a ball anywhere near me, but it was a nice game to watch.

At the end of the game I headed down to the umpire tunnel and got a ball from home plate umpire Jordan Baker for my fourth and final ball of the game:

So yeah. Overall a fun day at the ballpark. I would then meet Mikey and Sean, and we would head out of the stadium and back to campus where Sean and I would say goodbye until probably September as I would spend the next two days preparing for my final on Friday, which I would still find a way to not do that well on.

As you read in the last entry, my friend Sean dropped me off at my dorm at about midnight with the plan to for him to pick me up at 9:00 in the morning and head off to Chicago right away. Well because of a failed prank, I was up until after 1:00, when I finally fell asleep from exhaustion without setting my alarm. Thankfully through some miracle, I woke up at around 8:00 in the morning where I packed the quickest I ever have and met Sean outside where we headed off Chicago-bound.

I believe we only stopped twice on our way to Chicago. Once to eat breakfast at Denny’s–since we had both missed the dining hall breakfast by leaving so early–and once to get gas close around Madison, WI. There was a little mix-up that would define this game for me, though. Actually I guess you could call it two. I thought based the fact that a 9:00 departure time would be fine on my presumption that the White Sox game was starting at 7:00. About half-way through crossing Wisconsin, I thought, “You know what, I should probably make sure the game is starting at 7:00 Central time and not Eastern.” Turns out the game was 7:00 EST. That meant that it was starting at 6:00 our time. And another mistake I had made related to the fact that I thought the game started at 7 was that in my rush to pack everything up, I still hadn’t printed our tickets. That meant we would first have to stop by Sean’s house 40 minutes away from the ballpark before actually heading to the game.

All of this lead up to the first picture I took that day:

Batting practice was already half done and I was still in the car on my way to the game. Or course I didn’t have either my Angels or White Sox rosters printed, so I knew my streak of over 70 consecutive games with at least 1 ball snagged was in serious jeopardy. When I finally got into the stadium and got my way down to the 100 level despite not actually having a ticket for there, there was a little over 15 minutes of batting practice remaining, and this was my view of the field:

I didn’t think it was going to be an easy batting practice to begin with, though. That was because for the second day in a row, it was a bobblehead day. This game’s bobblehead was of Chicago’s beloved Paul Konerko:

That, Twins, is how you package a bobblehead.

A couple minutes in to me having entered the gates, I was sure my shutout would be ending soon:

I still can’t identify him for certain, but whoever the player under the arrow is fielded a ball near the wall by where I was, and when I asked for the ball, he threw the ball in and then looked up at me. Right then I motioned to him as I was saying “Can you throw me the next one?” To this he gave me a thumbs-up. A couple minutes after that, though, batting practice ended and I still sat at zero balls for the day. It was at this point that I made the decision and told Sean that we were going to be spending the game at the dugout:

And in the first inning, I saw a stat from that seat that caught my attention as someone who was born in Colombia:

It wasn’t until a few days prior to this game that even knew Quintana was Colombian, but I guess it’s cool. However, he’s the only one of the top-3 who hasn’t thrown me a baseball. So if you want me to root for you in this race, Jose, it’s your move.

The game for snagging was absolutely brutal. I want to say over half the baseballs ended up in the hands of Alberto Callaspo, who made eye contact with me several times throughout the night, but always ended up looking away and throwing the ball elsewhere despite the fact that I was asking him in Spanish while being decked-out in Angels attire. As miserable as I was with the whole situation that was unfolding, Sean was loving every second of it:

If you’ll remember, he and my friend Tony had made a goal of shutting me out for a game when they joined me a couple games ago. And after I caused them to fail miserably by snagging nine baseballs, I may have been a little in-your-face about it (jokingly of course) about it, so to see me struggling to get even a single baseball without him being responsible for it delighted Sean to no end.

Finally the end of the game approached us, and I formulated my plan to get a ball from home plate umpire, Jeff Nelson. Since the umpire tunnel at U.S. Cellular is directly behind home plate, there were two options. One option was to try to get into the “scout seats” right as the final out of the game was being recorded and hurry down to the tunnel before the umpires made their way back there, which would almost guarantee me a ball. The problem would be if the ushers don’t allow people into those seats even after the game is over, or if I got slowed down by the people exiting the section, I might not even be able to ask Nelson for a ball. My other option was to go to the edge of the home plate netting and yell out to the umpire as he walked off the field to the tunnel. I went the second route. Luckily, the last play of the game was a pop-up to the infield, which pulled Nelson towards the field. This gave me more time to get in position and be ready to yell once he walked my way. So I did and Nelson looked my way and rolled the ball to the wall right in front of me as he walked off the field, and I then leaned way over the wall and picked the ball up to extend my streak with at least 1 ball:

Little did I know it, but Sean was taking his first ever Vine of me at that same exact moment I took that picture that reflected my feeling on the situation perfectly. So here’s the link to that if you want to see it. But anyway, I went back to Sean’s house semi-satisfied with the outcome of the day knowing that my streak would live to see another day. We then headed out at to 7-11 with his younger brother and I want to say watched “For the Love of the Game”. It was either that or “Little Big League”. (Since I haven’t watched most baseball movies, it has been Sean’s goal to get me to watch as many as he can.) We would then get up the next day for another fun day of Chicago baseball, with a Mother’s Day twist.

I wasn’t exactly thrilled to go to this game, but in trying to get to 60 games this season, there are such games that I have to just suck up and go to anyway. Why did I not want to be at this game? This guy:

It was Josh Willinghammer bobblehead day, and I while I do like the bobblehead–despite the boring box–I knew a ton of other people would as well, and I was right. Here is the view in the bleachers to my right, right as I entered the stadium:

And here was the view in the bleachers to my left with the friend who joined me from my residence hall that day, Kyle:

I had told Kyle a couple of times of my baseball ventures and so he asked me if he could accompany me to a game whenever I was going to one next. It was like a week-and-a-half before the game, and the Twins were gone for a while, so this was the one we ended up going to. We had left our dorm at around 3:50, and got to the game at about 4:40, and by the time we got there, there was already a line at Gate 3 that went half-way to Gate 6. I won’t include a map, but if you want you can check it out and see what I mean. It would be a normal line size for Yankee Stadium, but for here it was massive.

It soon became clear that everyone was way more concentrated in the left field bleachers. Had I been smart and realized that the weather was relatively warmer, I might have gone up to the second deck and played for Josh Willingham, Adam Jones and players of their ilk to hit baseballs into the second deck. But sadly I didn’t think of it and instead just went over to the right-center field seats and got a ball from Josh Roenicke:

I had called out to Roenicke on a previous ball, but when he looked back at me, he thought the kid next to me had asked him for the ball. But then when I asked him for a ball when another rolled to the wall, he looked up and saw that I was all alone, so he tossed me the ball. I didn’t realize it until I went back and checked my stats, but that was my 100th baseball ever at Target Field, making Target Field only the second stadium I’ve accomplished that at. That was it for me for the Twins portion of BP, because as I said before, it was crowded. Target Field is an okay ballpark when there’s no one around. When it’s crowded, it shows its true ballhawking colors.

When Twins BP ended, I made my way to the Orioles dugout, but nothing was going on:

It was at the time that actual baseball-snagging action started to occur that I got a message from Sean saying that he had just parked and was headed to Gate 34. Since I was not ready to sacrifice snagging opportunities to go give him his ticket, I recruited Kyle to head out there and give him the ticket despite the fact that neither had met the other beforehand.

After Kyle left, I first tried to get a ball from the position players tossing by the dugout:

But all of them tossed their balls onto the field after they were done. I then tried to get a ball from the position players warming-up just past third base, but instead of getting a ball from them, one of the Orioles bullpen catchers, Ronnie Deck (unofficial assist to Avi Miller for the fact that I know his name), saw that the players weren’t tossing me a ball, so he tossed me a ball without me even asking for one:

(Notice the Orioles couple realizing I had gotten a ball and unintentionally photo-bombing me.) I gave this ball away to a kid as I was walking towards the left field foul pole.

In the time that it took Kyle to get out to right field, the position players warmed up completely. By the time Sean and Kyle were making their way back to me, I was almost to the foul pole in foul territory. So as I saw them cutting across the seats towards the dugout where Kyle had left me, I started waving towards them to draw their attention. They were behind me (read: away from the field), so I had to look back to wave to them. It was at this time I heard the crowd make some noise; like as if a ball was rolling on the warning track near the stands that a player might toss up. Right after I heard that, I felt a blow to both my left and right legs at about the knee area. While I was looking away from the field, an Orioles player–probably Manny Machado–had pulled a ball down the line and it managed to strike not one, but both of my legs on the fly. It actually didn’t hurt much at all right after the ball hit me. No, the most painful part of that whole incident was the fact that the ball bounced right off of me to the hands of the guy in front of me. However, it was because of this that I got my second ball of the day. Tommy Hunter had seen the whole thing go down, so when he was done throwing, he came over and signed a ball for me and my “troubles”:

As he gave me the ball and left, I said, “Thanks, Tommy. I appreciate it.” and he kind of smiled. It was the kind of smile that made me think I had gotten his name wrong. I was pretty sure it was Tommy Hunter, so I was confused by why he acted this way. I realized why when I read the writing on the ball. Here was the signature itself:

but here was what he wrote on the ball itself for me:

Hunter had gone to run poles, so by the time I had read the ball and understood it, he was already in center field, but when he made it back to the left field foul pole, I jokingly told him my reason for getting hit while giving him a hard time about putting what he did on the ball.

After that, I headed out to the seats in right field:

And when I looked to my right, I saw a couple of interesting things.

1. There was pretty much the whole Orioles roster in the outfield at one point:

Okay, so maybe that’s a bit of hyperbole, but that’s what, 15 people in the outfield that you can see in that picture alone?

2. The left field seats were absolutely packed because of the bobblehead day:

At most other stadiums that’s a decent-sized crowd, but because of the steepness and overhang in left field, I knew I wouldn’t have a chance at a ball in left field. This was particularly frustrating because it was J.J. Hardy’s group that was hitting, and he hit several baseballs to the spot where I usually play him at any ballpark. It was crowded, but who knows if I don’t have an extra couple of baseballs if I had been in left field for that group.

But with my legs making any movement very painful, I was stuck in right field. Sean and Kyle, who both knew how much of an annoyance it can be to follow me around when I’m running back and forth, seemed pretty content with just staying in right field, though:

They even had time to go get food and get back to find me still in the section that they had left me in. (This is usually not the case if you leave my side for over five minutes.)

Anyway, I wouldn’t get any other baseballs for the rest of batting practice itself, but at the very end of BP, I went down to the Orioles dugout and got their hitting coach, Jim Presley to toss me a ball as the baseballs were being transferred from the ball basket to the ball bag.

After that, I headed out to center field to try to get a ball from the groundscrew member who clears the batter’s eye of baseballs after batting practice, but I just barely missed him, getting there as he was headed off the batter’s eye:

The three of us alternated sitting behind the third base seating moat and the standing room in right field, but I couldn’t get another ball for the rest of the game.

Sean had brought his car to the game, so once we finally got out of the parking garage that Sean had parked in and got through the Minnesota traffic, Sean dropped Kyle and I off at our dorm on the St. Paul campus. Sean and I had just agreed the day prior that we were going to be taking a weekend trip to his home in Chicago so he could visit his mom on Mother’s Day and I could go to a couple of games at U.S. Cellular Field. So when he left us at the dorm just before midnight, it was knowing that we would be seeing each other just a few short hours later on our way to Chicago.

A second consecutive day at Target Field and look who decided to join me for the game:

You may recognize the person on the left as Sean Bigness, who has sometimes left comments, and has been in several entries in the past. The person on the right–looking like he wants to be somewhere else at the moment the picture was taken–I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned on here, but it’s my friend Tony who lives in the same dorm as I do. Like Sean, he was supposed to attend a game during the Twins’ opening series with me before something came up for him. But with Tony having finished a 20-page paper the day before and Sean being done with whatever it is Sean does, we had a three-person baseball party set-up. You may notice that the picture I used to introduce the two was taken during the game. That’s because in trying to coordinate all three of us to go to the game together, we arrived late for my standards and didn’t have time to take a group picture outside the gates before they opened. In getting to the game it was revealed to me that the goal of the other two members of the group was to shut me out this game. Thankfully, they absolutely failed at their goal.

As we got in the gates, Sean got way too much joy from the fact that my ticket scanner wasn’t working and that he got in through the gates first. (I still beat him to the left field seats even though we entered the center field gate, Gate 3. That he wasn’t too happy about.) Pretty much as we got to the seats, a ball got hit to right, and I managed to get through Sean trying to box me out for the ball, but sadly it slowed me down enough where two guys closer to the ball closed in on the ball, and one picked it up. Right after that, I made the adjustment and stood in the row under him. Josh Willingham–who hit the first ball–hit another ball to almost the same exact spot. I outran Sean to the gap in the railing, got in front of him in his row, and then beat the other two guys to the ball for my first of the day. I’m pretty sure I got a picture of the ball, but I think I deleted it.

After that, I told Sean and Tony–who had now failed at their goal–that I was headed out to right field. I meant this when I said it to them, but in going to right field, I saw whoever the hitter was at that point hit a ball to the wall in right-center field, so since I was right behind that section of seating, I went down to the first row and asked who I believe was Ryan Pressly for a ball, and he tossed it up to me:

for my second ball of the day. Both Tony and Sean were somewhere between confused and astounded when I met them back on the concourse (since they had still been catching up to me at that point and hadn’t seen any of the events that lead up to the Pressly ball).

We then completed the journey to right field where it was Sean who first got a player to toss him a ball in Jared Burton. Fortunately for me, I don’t think Sean was actually expecting Burton to toss him up the ball because of the fact that he was wearing a White Sox hat, so he actually literally dropped the ball. It went into the flower bed, where I picked it up and handed it to Sean. This may be cheap, but I got possession of the ball before I handed it to Sean, so it counts for me. Here is Sean hanging his head in shame after I gave him the ball:

Sean then insisted Tony take a “roommate” picture (Sean will be my roommate for the next school year), so I got to pile on the fact that Sean didn’t catch the ball with our respective poses:

I tried for the rest of Twins BP (which lasted less than ten minutes after that point) for Jared Burton to toss me a ball, but he either saw me get the Pressly ball or had reached his quota for giving away baseballs, because I know he heard my requests in which I actually called him by name (unlike Sean did) and yet he didn’t toss me a ball.

For that last part of Twins batting practice, this was the view to my right:

While they had both given up on simply preventing me from snagging baseballs, they both wanted to snag at least one of their own. Sean was trying the first-row-and-hope-the-ball-just-barely-clears-the-wall strategy, and Tony was just trying to be able to see the ball with the sun in his eyes. While I was in the front row asking Jared Burton for one of the times I did, a ball flew over my head and instinctively Sean put his arm out to try to prevent me from getting out of the row. The ball then bounced off of the raised wheelchair section at the top of the section and back on to the field.

As the Rangers took over batting practice, I headed over to foul territory down the left field foul line to try to get a ball from the pitchers who were starting to warm up. When I got there, I noticed a ball on the warning track, so I asked the police officer on the field if I could get the ball to give to a kid. He picked up the ball and tossed it to me. Here is the ball right before I walked and gave it to a kid two sections away, since there were none in my section with gloves:

When I resumed trying to get a ball another interesting thing happened. I was looking towards the Rangers pitchers as I was in the first row closest to field and then I just saw in the periphery of my vision that people were moving around frantically as if a ball were headed towards up, so I turned my head just as a Rangers pitcher screamed, “Heads up!” and I saw an Ian Kinsler line drive absolutely screaming towards me but cutting to my right. There were people to my right, but they got out of the way of the ball, so I leaned over the row and caught the ball:

It was very similar to how my neighbor, Greg Barasch caught a foul ball while he was in Marlins Park last season:

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Except I was further away, so I had more overall time to react to the ball. But you could argue that he had more time since I wasn’t paying attention to the ball until it was about half-way to me. Whatever. He got a Marlins Park commemorative game ball. He wins. I find it particularly interesting about that snag that I can make the more difficult catches this season so far, but it’s the easier hit-ball snags that have been giving me the most trouble.

After this catch, I figured getting a ball from the pitchers would be unlikely since most of them had seen me catch the ball, so I moved from foul territory to the outfield seating. As I got there, most of the pitchers had ended their throwing and were running “poles”–which if you don’t know, is just baseball jargon for running laps from foul pole to foul pole. One of these pitchers was Joe Nathan. When a ball got hit all the way to the wall, Nathan picked it up mid-stride and kept running, but as he did so, he scanned the crowd, saw me in “Rangers” gear. I put it in quotations because while I did have a Rangers hat on, I still have not bought a Rangers shirt, so it was simply a red shirt with a black-and-white Rangers logo printed on that I had made for the previous game but ended up not using because there was no batting practice. Once he saw me, he flipped the ball up for my sixth on the day:

This one was extra-special, though, because he is one of my favorite players ever from when he was the Twins closer, and I’ve been trying to get a ball from him for a couple of years now. With snagging a ball from him, only Tim Lincecum and Joe Mauer remain as active players from my “Favorite MLB Players” entry who I still haven’t snagged a ball from. I then headed out to the section in right-center field. There I got Tanner Sheppers to toss me a ball almost identically to Nathan. The only difference was that I was about 25 feet up from Sheppers, so considering he was basically shoveling the ball to me while he was running, he overshot me and the ball flew over my head and into the concourse. Thankfully no one back there was paying attention, so I managed to run into said concourse and pick the ball up:

It was soon after this, when I had shifted to pure right field, that Sean and Tony found me. I learned that they had gotten several food items between the two of them. They learned that I had absolutely cleaned up (for my standards, anyway) in their absence. It didn’t take long after they got back for a ball to get to the seats in the right-center field seats to my right. I thought it was going to hit and land in the seats, so I entered them and went lower than the ball to await the bounce back towards the field, but the ball’s trajectory was perfect enough that it just barely went under the overhang of the second deck and found its way to the concourse. Normally I would be mad, but look who ended up snagging it:

The ball bounced off the concrete on the concourse, the back metal mesh, and Tony snagged it while it was still mid-air. While it wasn’t his first snag ever, it was pretty impressive how quickly he reacted after the ball touched down.

After that I was entertained briefly by the fact that Derek Holland was trying to get the attention of a family in the third deck in foul ground in order to launch a ball to them. Here he is looking up to them:

Unfortunately they never looked down to the field since they were too busy paying attention to their food, so after about five to ten minutes of trying to get their attention, Holland gave up and tossed the ball to someone at field level.

I got my eighth ball of the day by asking Jason Frasor for a ball while he shagged it at the wall in right-center field while I was in the right field seats:

I then gave this ball away to a girl I had seen been trying to get a ball for a while at that point. I actually first denied her sister the ball, though, because I hadn’t seen her glove, so I said, “Sorry, I don’t give baseballs away to people who don’t have gloves.” It was at that point that I felt bad for denying her the ball. I told her I would give her the next ball I snagged, but Sean stepped in and gave her the ball that I had given him earlier on in the day. Here he is celebrating the fact that he gave the ball away behind the back of the girl he gave it away to:

Nice job, Sean.

I’ll spoil it for you right now and say that I didn’t snag another ball for the rest of batting practice. I search of this next non-exsitent snag, I moved over to the left field. It was actually Sean who managed to snag a ball there. Here’s how it happened:

Sean and Tony were still catching up to me at this point, so they were just entering the section at this point. As they were descending the staircase closest to the bullpen, a Ranger righty hit a ball into the row that they were crossing, so Sean walked into the row, and reached across his body to make the easy catch.

That was it for batting practice, but we stayed in left field for the start of the game:

where this was our view of the field:

My reason for this (other than to have an excuse to insert pictures from my “good” camera into the entry) was that I wanted to get a ball from the bullpen warm-ups so I would only have to get one ball after the game to finally crack double digits at Target Field. I didn’t, so I was going to have a tough task in front of me to get two baseballs after/during the game as we headed out to the standing room in the second inning.

In the standing room, we finally got the “good” camera out for some pictures since we weren’t running all over the place. The first picture we were going to take was me with the baseballs I had snagged that day and kept:

Plus the Derek Lowe ball from the previous day, since I hadn’t taken it out yet. Five of the six baseballs were from this game. (Nice try, by the way, Sean, but even though I don’t have Photoshop anymore, iPhoto can still get rid of “blemishes” in pictures.)

I then tried to take another picture of Sean and Tony, but this was the first take where Tony closed his eyes because of the flash:

And then again on the second take:

So finally on the third take, Tony went to extreme measures to keep his eyes open:

The only thing really interesting that happened from that point on was while Sean and I were playing catch in the stadium…Actually, there are three interesting things that happened; us playing catch inside Target Field was the first, but the other two surrounded it. Those two things were: 1. While we were playing catch, two police officers were walking towards us. Both Sean and I thought they were coming to tell us to stop playing catch, but what they instead did, because we were playing catch right above Gate 3, they made snowballs and tossed them down at the police officers who were manning the gate. It’s moments like this that make me appreciate NOT being in New York. Some people might think myself and other New York ballhawks are kidding when we say stuff like this, but I’m only partially kidding when I say that I probably would have come close to ejection if I did something similar in either New York stadium. Instead, these police officers actually turned it into something even more fun. They even pointed the fingers at us when the police officers they threw the snowballs at looked up at them. 2. While we were playing catch, I stopped Sean because I heard a familiar sound. It was the mascots being introduced for the Race at Target Field. I used to pretty much just ignore the race, but now I think I’m never going to miss it from now on. Anyway, as Sean and I watched, Skeeta (the mascot I ran as the previous day) pulled off her fourth victory in a row. I just thought it was cool at the moment, but I later learned that it is a record number of consecutive victories for one mascot, so it felt extra special to be a part of that, even if it is a record that probably won’t last forever. Skeeta almost extended the record to five consecutive wins, but started celebrating a little too early and got caught by Babe right at the finish line.

I’ll fast-forward the game for you and reveal that the Twins lost 4-3. At the end of the game, we worked our way to the dugout and I got a ball from home plate umpire Ted Barrett:

That would be ball number nine on the day for me. I made several attempts towards a ball number ten, but all fell short. Maybe my next game, so I can reach 100 career baseballs at Target Field as well as 500 total career baseballs in the same game? Who can know these things?

Anyway, we ended our day at the ballpark with a group picture–myself still pouting about not having cracked double digits at Target Field:

With that we headed back to campus where Tony and I went to have pizza before heading back to St. Paul, and Sean had fun monitoring drunk people while sober.

It started raining in Minneapolis at 11:00 AM. That was okay, though because according to my phone, the rain would end by 4:00 PM (before batting practice was set to start). Well, my phone was right:

Did that mean there’d be batting practice?

Nope:

Yeah, when I entered this was the most exciting thing happening:

Actually, that’s not hyperbole at all. See that fan in the bright orange going down the steps? That would be my guest to this game, Sean. I had been eyeing some cheap seats on Stubhub, but they were only being sold in pairs. Sean here is in my “History of Science” class. I forget how, but somehow, we revealed to each other that we were both baseball super-fans. When he said he was going to the Twins game Friday, and said he would want to catch a game with me some time, I jokingly said something like: “How about this Wednesday?” Shockingly, he accepted the offer.

Fast-foward to today: He and I- after some confusion- met up at the Washington Ave Bridge and walked to Target Field. Fast-forward to pre-game warm-ups: The Twins pitchers you saw started throwing. I played it completely wrong, so I didn’t get a single ball from them while they were throwing. However, I went behind the dugout to try to get a ball from Alex Burnett, but when I got there, and usher started telling me something just as I was about to ask Burnett for the ball, so I couldn’t do as I had planned. Fortunately, the usher was telling me there was a ball right by where I was standing. He suspected Burnett had thrown it just seconds before I arrived. Here is where it was in the first row:

I’m glad the usher told me, but it would have been nice to start a game with no BP with two balls right out of the gate. At this time, Sean was getting food, and although I had told him that I snag baseballs at games, he couldn’t believe I had already gotten a ball when he came back.

I then changed into my Royals gear:

Yes, my actual Royals shirt hadn’t showed up yet, so I taped a paper cut-out of the logo to ma blue shirt as I have done a few times previously. Anyway, there were two pitchers warming up, Kelvin Herrera and Bruce Chen. Apparently, someway, somehow, Bruce Chen learned Spanish, because he was talking to Herrera in Spanish. Anyway, Chen went off to run, and Herrera started throwing with someone else. When they finished, I asked Herrera to toss me the ball in Spanish, and he did:

That was it for pre-game activities. Normally, that would be it for the game, but did I mention where the cheapish seats were? Yeah, well let me just say I was able to try to get a ball during the pre-game position player throwing. When they came out, though, there was a problem:

You can’t really tell from the picture, but everyone brought their glove, yet no one thought to bring a ball. Eventually, someone *did* bring a ball, and that ball got tossed to me by David Lough:

But let’s take another look at that ball:

Yep. The Royals somehow had Oriole Park commemorative baseballs.

As for the game, this was my view:

That’s a pretty nice view for $20.

I also saw something I had never seen before at Target Field. It had rained, so that combined with the natural cold to make it cold enough for the Twins to turn on the heat lamps in the concourse:

I’ve got to say, that’s a really nice touch to have for a ballpark in Minnesota. I know the shorts-clad Sean really appreciated the Twins having them.

As you can guess, I was playing the dugout for third-out balls. Well for whatever reason, whenever Eric Hosmer recorded a third out at first base, he tossed the ball to Alcides Escobar who ALWAYS tossed the ball to a kid. I could have reached for a ball in the first inning that was meant for one of said kids, but it didn’t feel right. However, in about the fifth inning, the inning ended with Mike Moustakas catching a line drive. When he got back to the dugout, he tossed the ball just to my right:

Right after I got the ball, I opened my glove up for a kid right next to me to take the ball. That was my fourth ball of the game.

Like I said before, this was a cold, rainy game to begin with, so when the Royals had Sean and I singing, “The runners on base go round and round…” it was pretty empty at Target Field:

I almost caught a Justin Morneau foul ball, but I couldn’t get my glove over one of the railings in my section, and the ball took a huge bounce off the concrete after that into the seats outside of the “moat” above me.

After the game ended, I went down to the umpire tunnel and got a all from the home plate umpire, Dan Bellino:

At the time, I thought the ball was clearly intended for me, but after I jumped to catch it, I looked right behind me to see Sean staring right at me. It may have indeed been intended for him. Don’t worry, though, I would give him the ball two days later when we once again went to the same game. Anyway, this was the second highest total I had ever recorded at a game with no batting practice. Even though I don’t like playing third-out balls for the exact reason that they are so easy to get, it was nice to be able to get three baseballs during or after the game. Normally I would be stuck at two balls on a day like this. Also, according to mygameballs.com, this was the first ball he has ever thrown up to a member.

After the game, Sean and I got a parting picture together before heading back to the University of Minnesota:

Yeah, he’s a White Sox fan as he’s from Chicago, but in all fairness, he was rooting for the Twins this game, so he’s forgiven for one game.

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My Social Media Sites

Instagram Profile
My Instagram profile, where I post some nice pictures of baseball or other life things. You can even see my four most recent pictures in a widget further down on this sidebar.

My YouTube Channel
I highly recommend this over any of the other sites. Here I make content that sometimes overlaps with the blog, but is a medium like the blog in it of itself; unlike the other sites, which are just supplementary to both my YouTube channel and the blog.

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Twitter Account
My Twitter account, where I keep you up-to-date on blog/baseball happenings. See below to look at some of my most recent tweets. tweets

Ballhawking Sites

Cook & Sons' Baseball Adventures
Although most ballhawking blogs are, Todd Cook’s narrative of his and his sons’ adventures going to ballparks is the closest thing there is to a father-son-baseball written reality show.

Hit Tracker
An amazing tool that was responsible for my success at Yankee Stadium in 2010. See Season end review (Nov, 1, 2010) if you want to see the difference @ Yankee Stadium.

My Game Balls
The ballhawking community’s mode of communication and competetion

My mygameballs.com account
Specifically *my* account on mygameballs.com which has much more detailed stats than I have time to write about

Plouffe's New Hairdo
One of my new Minnesota friends, Tony Voda’s ballhawking/Twins/music-in-the-offseason-but-sometimes-during-the-season-too blog.

Steel City Ballhawk
A blog written by elite ballhawk, Nick Pelescak, about all of the games he attends, which is a ton since he is a season ticket holder at PNC Park.

The Ballhawker
The ballhawking blog of a fellow New York ballhawk, Chris Hernandez.

Zack Hample (The Baseball Collector)
Now If you are reading this blog there is a .00009 % chance that you haven’t visited this blog, but as a service to the reason this blog exists I want to have Zack add that .00009% to his viewership. It is the least I can do.

MLBlogs I Recommend and Follow

Ballparks on a Budget
Ever want to go to a baseball game outside of your local team but don’t want to empty the bank? Alicia Barnhart’s your girl with Ballparks on a Budget. She should know how to spend wisely in going to games because, well, she’s been to them all. Just last

Dodger Blue World
Just a great blog written by dedicated Dodger super-fan Emma Amaya.

Minoring In Baseball
A blog written by the father of just a family who are all fans of the West Michigan Whitecaps who is just a great guy in general: Michael David.

MLB.com Blogs Central
As the title kind of suggests, this blog is pretty much the center of the MLBlogs unvierse. It apply sometimes goes by the moniker: “MLBlogosphere”

The Ballpark Guide
A MUST-read for any MiLB afficionados, or even many MLB fans. Malcolm MacMillan goes to different ballparks all over and details his visit on the blog and writes tips for anyone going to that ballpark on his website (which can be found on the blog’s homep

The Next White Sox GM
If you were a baseball mind growing up, you may have gotten a comment from an elder female family member (usually grandma) saying, “You should be the one to run the team with all the knowledge you’ve got about baseball.” Well, here’s a kid who might just

The Unbiased MLB Fan
Matt Huddleston doesn’t root for the teams; he roots for the players. I wish I could say more, but I suspect any other explanation of his blog would be a multi-centennial-word ordeal.

Three Up, Three Down
One would assume not getting into the MLB Fan Cave is a sad experience. (Well, at least I would; I’ve never been old enough to apply.) However, this group of fans turned that usually-sad experience and turned it into a great blog where there are just a sl

MLBlogs I Recommend

Observing Baseball Classics

"The Baseball" Book Review
In this entry I reviewed/summarized the entirety of the book “The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals, and Secrets Beneath the Stitches” written by Zack Hample.

10/19/10 ALCS: Yankee Stadium
Sure I had no clue how to write it, but this was my first ballhawking entry ever and my only of 2010, so it falls under the category “classic”

Ballhawk Charities 2012
Where I went over the four ballhawk charities I had heard of at the beginning of the season as a way of helping them out by getting the word out.

Case Study on Morality in Baseball
A research paper I did way back in the summer of 2010. I don’t necessarily agree with everything I wrote back then anymore, but it does add an interesting perspective to things especially in today’s steroid talk.

Collected Baseball Knick-knacks
Quite simply: pretty much everything baseball-related that I had collected and managed to keep ahold of as of November, 20, 2011.

Dissecting/Deconstructing Baseballs
I’ve taken apart several baseballs before, and it was fun, so I decided to make a video of me taking apart a baseball and adding tips for other people to do so too.

Favorite MLB Players
I did probably one of my funner videos on who my favorite players were from the present day, when I first started watching baseball, and my favorite player that I never saw play at all.

Houlihan Park Tour and Snagging Analysis
This is my high school, Fordham Prep,’s home field, which being the manager of the varsity team for three years, I spent proabably more games here than at any other baseball field. So when I returned to my high school for a day, I took a quick tour of the

Observing Baseball Trivia
See the description of the link two links above, but modify it slightly so it fits this entry’s title.

Pitching Aces in the Playoffs
My first ever “real” entry that I ever wrote back on the surplus of star pitchers in the 2010 playoffs. It was pretty good considering I knew nothing about blogging, or writing in general for that matter.

Pure Genius
This is just me explaining how the Phillies got three aces of pitchers; nothing fancy. But it was me showing my first flash of general manager mind to the world, so that’s why I like it.

Sabermetrics (the explanation)
This was me explaining some simple sabermetric statistics for the people of the world who have heard of the stats but never really knew what significance they had/have over the more common metrics. I take pride in this because it can potentially educate s

Survey of Adults Perception of Baseball
I surveyed a bunch of my teacher as to which baseball player was there favorite; both in and outside of New York. It’s a bit more complex than that, but the only way to understand is to read the entry.

Tour Target Field in the Snow
Target Field is in Minnesota, so it only felt fitting that I should take at least one day to tour it while it was buried in the snow. And that’s what this entry was: a video of me going around Target Field while it was snowing and there was a ton of snow

Weird Observing Baseball Facts and Records
I may yet do this every year…and it would then become its own link category–but for the meantime–there is only one set of Observing Baseball Facts and Records, so it definitely goes under “Observing Baseball Classics”.

Blast from the Baseball Past

8/24/08 Dodgers at Phillies: Citizens Bank Park
My second ever game to CBP that ended with Pedro Feliz hitting a three-run walk-off home run while my dad and I were in the car because we had to catch a flight to Detroit seven hours later that same day in New York.

Obsevers of Baseball

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